The term “telemetry” refers to the science or activity of gathering data about remote objects and transmitting the data electronically. Systems that gather and report information about an object including the location of the object, may be referred to as location and telemetry systems.
Location and telemetry systems may gather location data and/or telemetry data. As used herein, the term “location data” refers to information related to the location of an object. The term “telemetry data” refers to any other type of data that may be determined about an object.
There are many applications for location and telemetry systems. For example, the government may wish to know the location of a shipping container for security reasons. As another example, a company may wish to know where company vehicles or personnel are currently located. As another example, someone operating a large warehouse may benefit from knowing where a particular item is located in the warehouse. As yet another example, a construction company working on a large-scale, multi-acre construction site may want to know the location and/or status of its construction equipment (or other equipment) on the site. There are many other examples of applications for location and telemetry systems.
Location and telemetry systems typically utilize wireless communications. Some location and telemetry systems utilize short-range wireless technologies, such as Ultra-Wideband (UWB), ZigBee, mesh networking, active radio frequency identification (RFID), etc. Other location and telemetry systems may use passive technologies where the tag device is activated and read by a local reader. These types of location and telemetry systems may be referred to herein as localized location and telemetry systems (LLTS).
For some applications, the devices to be monitored by a location and telemetry system may be too widely dispersed or far away from an infrastructure to utilize short-range LLTS technologies. The assignee of the present disclosure has developed a location and telemetry system that permits devices to be monitored over a much wider area than the localized systems referred to above. This type of location and telemetry system may be referred to herein as a wide area location and telemetry system (WALTS). Although a WALTS may permit devices to be monitored over a much wider area than an LLTS, an LLTS may be capable of providing more accurate information than a WALTS under some circumstances.
The present disclosure relates generally to localized location and telemetry systems and wide area location and telemetry systems. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for obtaining and using data from a localized location and telemetry system in a wide area location and telemetry system.